Once there were no stone walls. For the fiercely idealistic Yankee homesteader, a small family farm was worth fighting for, and the rocky soil yielded far more than walls. Cleared and plowed, it fed a family and provided a living. Oxen gave way to horses, horses to tractors, and still the farm persisted and the family persevered, each generation... more...

From the beginning of the twentieth century to World War II, farm wife May Lyford Davis kept a daily chronicle that today offers a window into a way of life that has all but disappeared. Through May and her husband Elmo's story, Days on the Family Farm, showcases the evolution of agriculture from horses to automobiles and tractors, a surprisingly... more...

Life on the Old Farm takes you back to a time, not so long ago, when country life in Britain followed a pattern that had remained largely unchanged for centuries. In this series of fascinating reminiscences, farmers from all over Britain reveal their knowledge - the last generation who know at first hand traditions dating back to Saxon times.Life... more...

Kimber shares his adventures, misadventures, and reflections as a part-time farmer and fetcher of firewood, his struggles with recalcitrant sheep and aging tractors, the joys of roaming the hills with his dog, plunking for pickerel in the lily pads, savoring the echoes of silence in a sleeping Maine village. Like a good apple pie, these essays are... more...

Based on interviews conducted by the University of Kentucky's Family Farm Project and supplemented by archival research, photographs, and recipes, Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky Family Farms, 1920--1950 recalls a vanishing way of life in rural Kentucky. Focusing on the family farm in the first half of the twentieth century, John van Willigen and... more...

"Sooner or later, nearly everyone who cares about wine and food comes to Sonoma"—so begins this lively excursion to a spectacular region that has become known internationally as a locavore's paradise. Part memoir, part vivid reportage, Field Days chronicles the renaissance in farming organically and eating locally that is unfolding in Northern California.... more...

Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University in 1933, but unable to find work, Charles M. Wiltse joined his parents on the small farm they had recently purchased in southern Ohio. There, the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, corn, and other farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm intact. In wry and often... more...